Court of Appeals affirms murder conviction in coffee shop owner killing
In an opinion issued this month, the New Mexico Court of Appeals affirmed the 2021 conviction of Gregg Steele in the murder of Taos coffee shop owner Patrick Larkin.
According to the opinion, Steele claimed in an appeal that he was not given proper counsel, citing the social distancing mandates enforced by the Supreme Court as the reason for his unsatisfactory trial. Steele specified that maintaining a 6-foot distance between him and his legal counsel made it difficult to have adequate communications with them.
As the issue currently stands, the court is denying his appeal, saying that Steele’s concern regarding pandemic procedures be taken up with the Supreme Court, not the Court of Appeals, as they were the entity to issue the procedure. The opinion went on to call Steele’s attempted prima facie case “erroneous” and prejudicial, as the poor quality of communication would not have altered the outcome of the trial.
“Although we have no doubt that these limited means of communication impeded counsel’s ability to freely communicate with Defendant to some degree,” the opinion read, “such does not singularly render counsel deficient to the extent that establishes a prima facie showing of ineffective assistance of counsel.”
“We conclude that Defendant’s claims, as thus far developed, relate to the methods of and diminished opportunity for communication with counsel and the investigators and not the complete absence thereof,” the opinion continued, “and under the circumstances set forth at the hearing on the motion for new trial, we hold there to be no error of law in the district court’s denial of a new trial on the basis of ineffective assistance of counsel.”
The Court of Appeals encouraged Steele to file an evidentiary hearing within a habeas corpus proceeding.
Steele, 55, was convicted of second-degree murder and two counts of tampering with evidence in February 2021 for the murder of Larkin, his next-door neighbor and World Cup Café owner on Aug. 27, 2019. Larkin was arrested two days after the incident occurred for driving with an open container and resisting arrest. He had confessed to the murder to his landlord, who told the police.
Steele currently faces more than 20 more years in prison.